I smile. I was just thinking the same thing.
Mr. Connor’s phone rings and he pulls it out of his pocket as he walks. It rings again and he flips it open. “Connor here.”
He freezes, listening on the phone. His eyes narrow, then widen, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. He lowers the phone. “Adam, you’ll have to excuse me.” He spins and walks away.
“No problem, Mr. Connor. Take all the time you need.”
As he rounds the turn in the corridor, I see him break into a run.
Time for me to meet Zoe. All the time in the world. I smile to myself. How lucky is that?
Chapter Four
I climb the stairs to the second floor just as the lunch bell rings. Classroom doors burst open and students pour into the hallway. The hallway fills as people rush off to the cafeteria or gather in knots by their lockers to eat their lunch. A guy pushes past me, and my pack catches him in the shoulder. He puts his hand on my chest and pushes back, just hard enough that I know he’s pissed, but not so hard that it counts as fighting. I see Zoe at her locker and plow through the throngs to reach her.
Zoe has silky hair she always wears in a ponytail. She calls it red but I think it’s the color of new pennies. Zoe circles one arm around my neck and gives me a hug. She smells like peppermint lip balm and pottery clay from her art class. Into her ear I say, “Mr. Connor says I need some exercise. He says I should go for a walk on the seawall. He practically told me to cut classes this afternoon.”
Zoe laughs. “If you’re asking me to go with you, I’m tempted. But I have a math exam this afternoon and I have to study.” She grabs her math text from the shelf in her locker. “You can help.” She sits on the floor and tugs my hand to sit beside her.
I actually attend math class with some regularity. I like subjects that have right or wrong answers. Ambiguity bothers me. So does getting up in the morning. Sometimes it’s just easier to stay in bed.
Expanding equations is almost pleasant, sitting here with Zoe. I watch as she works. She holds her pencil so that the knuckle on her first finger points up like a little mountain.In the creases of her finger, I see traces of red clay.
Zoe looks up to find me gazing at her. She smiles in a way that makes me think if I had the nerve, I could kiss her right now.
I say, “Math is just like clay. It is what it is.”
I imagine peppermint lip balm.
Zoe says, “Math is like poetry. The answer is hidden under layers and layers of symbols.”
I imagine the kiss. Would she close her eyes?
I say, “All answers are hidden. Otherwise, everything is a given.” I lean toward her.
She says, “Like feelings.” She closes her eyes.
Then the alarm bell starts to clang.
Zoe’s eyes fly open and she says, “Not another lockdown drill.”
For a second the hall gets quiet. Then a collective groan lifts from the students in the hallway. Just last week we had a lockdown drill and now the same alarm is sounding. A few students glance around but no one seems too concerned.
Several girls standing at their lockers settle onto the floor and open their lunches. Another group laughs and jokes.
A teacher comes out of his classroom and shouts, “Lockdown, now!” When no one moves, the teacher takes the kid closest to him and shoves him into an open classroom. Then he strides over to the girls sitting on the floor and hauls one of them to her feet. She protests as he pushes her into the classroom. A few kids make their way into an open classroom. No one is moving fast.
I hoist myself to my feet. “Looks like your math exam got cancelled. How would you rather spend the afternoon—in a lockdown drill or avoiding school with me?”
Zoe rolls her eyes, but she lets me pull her to standing.
The teacher is herding kids into a classroom. He pulls one last student into the room and shouts, “Lock this door. No one goes in or out.”
It’s just a drill and this teacher is in full lockdown mode, totally whacked out on the thrill of the threat. I tug on Zoe’s hand. “We’ll take the back stairs.”
The stairwell is empty, and we laugh as we take the stairs two at a time. We’re still laughing when we reach the bottom of the stairs. Two things happen at the exact same time. First, we see the stairwell doors chained and padlocked. Then we hear Mr. Connor’s voice over the PA. He says, “This is not a drill. There is a gunman in the school.” The thin edge of fear in Mr. Connor’s voice is totally real.
Chapter Five
It’s like the entire school floods into the stairwell. People pound down the stairs toward us. Their voices clamor, frightened voices. They push and shove toward the blocked exit door, trying to escape the school.
Like fish in a bucket, that’s what we are. My mouth goes dry. A locked stairwell seems like a good place to kill a lot of people at one time. I grab Zoe’s hand. “Come on. We have to go back up.”
We push against the flow of people, trying to get back up the stairs. As we run we scream, “The door is locked. It’s a trap.” When more people reach the locked door, they too push back up. Eventually, the tide of people tramples up the stairs and I have to hang on tight to Zoe.
At the second-floor landing, we find the doorway to the corridor jammed with people six or seven deep trying to get through to the classrooms. So many people are pushing at once that no one is moving. A big guy throws himself over the wall of people. I see his feet kicking against people’s heads. He makes it over. More guys follow him. I feel someone climbing onto my back. Then a skate shoe slams against my cheek as the guy propels himself over the crowd. Girls are doing it too, clawing their way over the backs of their classmates, pulling on people’s hair, digging their heels into people to get into the hallway.
I make a stirrup with my hands and shout at Zoe, “Give me your foot. I’ll lift you up.”
Zoe shakes her head. “I’m not leaving you.” Just then the jam gives way and we pour into the hallway. It’s all I can do to keep my footing. People run headlong, forcing others out of their way, piling into the classrooms. In front of me, a girl falls. Some people step around her. Most trample right over her. For a second I think about stepping over the girl too, but I bend down and pull her to her feet.
It’s Natalie from Science 10. Her eyes are wild. She’s crying, and mascara streams down her face. Her hair is tangled. Her shirt is ripped. She stumbles again and I grab her. People rush past us like we’re not there. Guys are crying. People are screaming over and over, as if it is a ride. But it’s not a ride. This is real.
I push Zoe and Natalie toward an open classroom door. The doorway is jammed with people trying to get in. I can see there must be fifty kids in the classroom. Some of the kids are under the desks. I wonder how they think that is going to help them escape from a shooter. Other students have rolled the shutters down over the windows. Someone shouts that people should get away from the walls. Would bullets go through a wall? Through a solid wood door? I doubt it. One thing I know: it’s better to be in the classroom than in the open hallway. People are shouting, “Close the door! Close the door!”
I push the people in front of us so they sprawl into the classroom. The guy just ahead of us makes it into the classroom. Then he lunges for the door. “Close it!” he screams. “Lock it down!”
I know the guy. We have classes together.
I shout at him, “Not yet. Let us in!”
He looks me straight in the eye and slams the door.
I hear the lock thumping into place.
For a second, I stand, stunned. In lockdown drills, once the door is closed, no one comes in. So long as the door is closed and locked, students inside will be safe. But students outside are screwed. That’s how it works. And those bastards just shut the door on Zoe, me and Natalie.
All down the hall, doors slam closed. We’re alone in the hallway. I hit the door with my shoulder.
Zoe’s hair has slipped out of its ponytail. She’s not crying, but her eyes
are so wide, her skin so white, I think she could be disappearing.
I crash against the door. “Let us in!” I throw myself against the door and actually feel it shudder. Voices on the other side are angry, afraid I’ll break the door.
Natalie wails, “You’re leaving us out here to die!”
If they don’t open the door for Natalie, they’ll never open it for me. I hit the door again and again. Zoe puts her hands on my shoulders. I am so panicked I can barely feel her touch. She says, “Adam, we have to move.”
Where? The classrooms are locked down and we’re locked out. And it’s my fault because I wanted to leave the school. Instead of getting in a classroom when we had the chance, I wasted our time trying to leave.
Zoe takes my hand. Suddenly, I can feel her touch again, feel that she’s still here.
“Now, Adam.”
We look down at Natalie. She’s slipped to her knees, rocking, her hands over her ears. Zoe reaches for one of Natalie’s hands and I grab the other. We yank her to her feet and start to run just as we hear the first shots.
Chapter Six
The shots sound at a distance, on the main floor, maybe at the office. Between Zoe and me, Natalie stumbles. I yank on her hand. “Get up!”
Zoe throws me a look. She speaks gently to Natalie. “We have to get out of the hall. Can you keep up with us?”
Natalie nods.
We take off down the hall. The classroom doors are closed, all of them. Behind the doors, I can hear people’s frightened voices. Try being out in the hall, I think to myself.
At the boy’s washroom, we push against the door and it opens. If we can get in, so can the shooter, but it’s better than being in the open hallway. We jam into the washroom.
A guy I know, Baker, is sitting on the sink. As we burst in, his eyes get really wide and he drops a smoldering butt into the sink. Exhaling, he says, “You scared me, man. I thought you were Connor, going to bust me.”
Natalie stops blubbering. Zoe blinks. Didn’t he hear the alarm? I wave away the cloud of smoke and say, “Uh, Baker, you know there’s a lockdown, right?”
With his eyes narrowed against the smoke, he looks at Zoe and Natalie. “What are you two doing in here? This is the boys’ can, isn’t it?” He looks around as if he isn’t sure.
I say, “Baker, it’s a real lockdown. It’s not a drill.”
Baker’s eyebrows lift. He reaches into the sink to retrieve his smoke.
“Baker, there’s a shooter in the school.”
As if on cue, we hear the sound of gunshots, closer than before.
Baker swears under his breath. He launches himself off the sink and into the toilet cubicle.
Zoe pulls Natalie farther away from the door. There’s no lock on the washroom door, no surprise. One cubicle. Three urinals. A partition between the door and the urinals.
More gunshots, and now there is no denying it—the shots are very close.
I push Zoe and Natalie into the cubicle. “Get up on the toilet. If the shooter just looks under the door, maybe he’ll think no one is in here.”
It’s lame and we all know it. Natalie starts to cry again.
I say, “Of course, if he hears us, he’ll blast us all.”
Natalie shuts up.
Baker crouches with his feet on the toilet seat. He must have size thirteen feet, and there is no way we’re all going to fit up there with him, not unless one of us stands in the toilet, which I’m prepared to do right about now.
More gunfire and it’s close. Even in the washroom, I can hear screaming voices from the classrooms. The shooter can’t get into the classrooms, not with the lockdown. I guess he could blow a classroom door lock, but from the way he’s moved through the school, it appears more random. He doesn’t seem to be spending much time in any one place.
Natalie and Zoe fold themselves around Baker on the toilet seat. Natalie pulls out her phone.
Everyone with a cell phone must have phoned 911 by now. Where the hell are the cops?
Zoe says, “Natalie, you’re not actually calling someone, are you?”
Natalie gives Zoe a “yeah, duh” look.
Zoe says, “Because you can’t make a sound.”
Natalie says, “Oh. Right.” And she closes the phone.
More shots and they’re so close that I don’t stop to think about it. I jump up onto the toilet seat. If I face the door of the cubicle and perch with only my heels on the seat, I can just fit.
The gunshots stop. I want to reach for Zoe, I want to hear her voice. As if Baker can read my mind, he whispers, “Easy, man.”
For a long time it’s quiet. Then I hear two things. First, the classroom noise filtering into the hallway gets louder. That means someone has opened the washroom door. I feel Baker tense. I’d like to scream except I can’t even breathe. The second sound I hear is the chirpy ringtone of Natalie’s cell phone.
Thank you, Natalie. We might as well hang a sign on the door, Here we are.
She silences the phone.
Sweat runs into my eyes but I don’t dare move to wipe it away. Baker is weirdly still. The hallway sound recedes and I hear the washroom door close. Is he gone? Did he leave?
Footsteps. Heavy footsteps. He’s here.
My knees go liquid and it’s all I can do to keep my balance.
The footsteps pause outside the cubicle. I hear him laugh, softly at first, then more loudly. Then the cubicle door opens.
He’s wearing a blue shirt with buttons and a pocket. He’s got a gun in his hand. Our eyes lock. He stops laughing.
The shooter is Josh.
The gun comes up.
Maybe I’ll stop the bullets. Maybe Baker won’t get hit. Maybe Josh will shoot me and leave the others.
I feel suddenly ice cold.
I watch Josh close his finger over the trigger.
Did I feed the dog this morning? I can’t remember if I fed the dog.
I smell piss.
The sound of the gun rockets inside my head, and I clamp my eyes closed and scream. Everyone is screaming, even Josh, and then he shoots again and it’s totally dark inside the washroom.
Chapter Seven
Somewhere it registers that I’m not dead, but it takes Baker stepping into the toilet bowl to convince me. Baker shakes off his foot, cursing. I feel drops of toilet water spray my face. Okay, I’m not dead.
I stumble off the toilet seat, my legs barely able to take my weight. “Zoe?” Broken glass crunches under my feet. “Zoe!”
“I’m fine.” I feel her hands on my chest. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” My voice is a croak.
I hear the snap of a lighter, and Baker’s face appears in the small circle of flame. “He shot out the light,” Baker says. He shovels the broken glass out of the way with his shoe.
In the pale pool of light, the four of us stand, stunned. When I look at Natalie, I gasp. Blood is running from under her hair. Baker must see it too. He says to her, “You better sit down.”
Natalie touches her fingers against her chin. When she sees the blood, her eyes get big.
I grab Natalie and lower her to the floor. Zoe rips out a sheaf of paper towel and presses it to the side of Natalie’s head.
Natalie starts to howl.
I’m no doctor, but based on her volume, she doesn’t seem to be badly hurt. I say to Baker, “Hold the lighter up.”
Baker says, “You want me to open the door, get the light from the hall?”
Zoe and I reply at once. “No!”
Baker shrugs. He holds the lighter close to Natalie’s head. Zoe eases away the wad of paper towel. The blood seems to be oozing from just over Natalie’s right ear. Gently, I run my hand over her scalp. Except for the blood, her skull feels like it should. I say to her, “A bullet must have grazed your head.”
Grazed her head. As in, barely missed shattering her skull. As in, barely missed splattering her brain. I replace Zoe’s hand against the wound, pressing her hand for a moment.
> Baker whips off his shirt and wraps it around Natalie. “Gotta keep her warm.” He gathers Natalie against his chest. “Here. Lean back. I’ve got you.”
Baker must be the most unlikely Boy Scout, but Natalie settles against him. Her howling subsides to hiccupping sobs. It’s clear now that the smell of pee was Natalie’s. If Baker notices, he ignores it. Natalie opens her cell phone and starts punching the keys.
“The bleeding seems to have stopped.” Zoe peers under the paper towel. She grabs a clean stack and hands them to Baker. He holds them to Natalie’s head. Zoe straightens up.
I pull her into a hug and burrow my nose in her hair. “Are you crying?” I hold her so that I can see her face. “You are.” I offer her my sleeve to wipe her face. “He won’t be back, Zoe. If he meant to kill us, he would have.”
“He got Natalie.”
“I think a bullet ricocheted and got Natalie.”
“He still got her. He could have killed her.”
“But he didn’t.”
Baker looks up at us. “Weird. I wonder why he didn’t kill us.”
I think of the way Josh looked when he found us in the stall. Gleeful. I shudder thinking about it. Then he recognized me. He was surprised at first, and then, I don’t know, the look in his eyes changed. He was disappointed maybe. Maybe pissed. Pissed that the kid he finds is the one kid in the entire school he might have been able to call a friend.
I say, “His name is Josh. He won’t be back here, but I don’t think he’s done.”
Chapter Eight
I feel everyone looking at me. I’m sweating again. Big fat pellets of sweat run down my face. Zoe breaks free of my hug. “It was Josh? Josh with the hamster?”
Natalie gets very quiet.
Baker says, “Who is Josh?”
Baker is in my grade along with Josh. I say, “You know Josh. Glasses. Kind of big. Always wears a blue shirt.”
Lockdown Page 2
